Picking up the Pieces
by Ben79487
Summary: Alternate history fanfic with a lotta OCs. The Battle of Manhattan has been lost, and with the gods' powers restricted by the Titans, they bank all their hopes on the Chosen Seven, seven mortals who can see through the Mist. This follows Vera Balogh and John Clay through the streets of New York to unite the Chosen Seven, along with the only survivor, Annabeth Chase. (ON HIATUS)
1. Prologue

**Picking Up the Pieces**

**Prologue**

_**Warning: This story contains a lot of OCs. (Original Characters, if you're wondering.) Prepared to see seven new characters!**_

_18 August_

_Annabeth Chase_

"PERCY!" I cried as the Empire State Building was about to fall.

Let me grasp the gravity of that. The Empire State Building, the foundation of Western Civilization, was about to fall.

"PERCY!"

The support beams creaked. And as I watched, the whole side of the building sheared off and fell towards 35th Street.

"PERCY!"

I only heard a scream and a figure that fell from above. It looked disturbingly like Percy.

_Seaweed Brain, you have gotten himself killed._

_18 August_

_Vera Audrey Balogh_

"And now, we have a follow-up on the Manhattan situation, where—"

I turned off the TV. They were replaying the situation in Manhattan, which was the one and only thing they showed. It, actually, was a bit weird.

First, Manhattan had somehow turned into rubble today.

Second, nobody knew who, or rather, what, was doing it.

Third, I had a sinking feeling that whoever was doing it would come for me.

Don't ask me how I know.

I just do.


	2. I Get Attacked By My Teenage Teacher

**Picking Up the Pieces**

**I Get Attacked By My Teenage Teacher**

_August 19_

_Vera Audrey Balogh_

"What's wrong, Vera? You thrashed the whole night," my mother asked as she woke me up from sleep.

"It's just a nightmare!" I immediately went into defense mode.

"Relax, Vera. Nobody's going to bother ol' Brooklyn. Daddy will be okay."

It was, in fact, not a nightmare. After the Manhattan Incident, as it was called, I had some weird dreams.

Like, _really_ weird dreams, a replay of what the Manhattan Incident had to offer.

It was not pretty.

And about my father, well, he was a Wall Street banker, and Wall Street, I heard, got hit pretty hard. _He may never come back,_ I thought, trying to stifle the wave of tears in my eyes.

Just then, the TV flickered on, displaying an interview of a certain Annie Bell from CNN.

"Still the only survivor in Midtown Manhattan, Annie Bell today is being interviewed for her account of the incident."

The camera shifted to a college-age girl with gray eyes and blond hair tied back with a Scrunchie. She looked like she was about to cry.

The girl started speaking, and a hush fell across the assembled reporters.

"Hello, as you may already know, my name's Annie Bell. I'm being interviewed for the eyewitness account of the Manhattan Incident."

I rolled my eyes. Did she really have to repeat that?

"I was traveling with my best friend Peter, and well, we were touring the Empire State Building. I remember the Chinese restaurant on the 88th floor."

I also rolled my eyes.

"W-"

A burst of static cut off the TV just as the clock hit 7:30.

"Honey! Get off the couch! It's time for our exercises!"

Honestly, sometimes I wondered if I was ever going to see my father again.

_Vera Audrey Balogh_

Yes, my mother always kept me fit and exercised, no matter how much my ADHD brain hated it. The only catch was that she always supervised me after the news about the Incident went around.

Today, though, my mother was more panicky than usual. I guess everybody hits a nerve after their husband goes missing, but today, her panic level went up to a 9.3, the highest it had been ever since we moved to Brooklyn. (Our old house in LA had went up in flames. Long story. _Don't_ ask.)

The only other time this happened was whenever we moved.

She set me off to run laps along the high school track. Although it was technically private property, the neighborhood high school didn't really care who was using it during the summer, as long as they didn't damage the property too much. My mother figured that that track would be a great way to keep me in shape, just in case the lunatics who had caused the Incident had come out for Brooklyn and I was in their spotlight.

Me, however? I hated it. I always felt embarrassed running in front of a high school, even in the summertime. I wondered if everybody was like my mother, so panicky after the Incident.

This time, though, I felt something was wrong. Not just "random high schooler wandering the area" wrong, but majorly wrong. I was running the part of the track closest to the school when the fire alarm sounded.

_BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!_

Take that sound and multiply it by twenty. That was how annoying the fire alarm was. No wonder I was getting a headache. I was pretty sure it was just a cooking accident, anyway. All of the fire alarms at our old school had been caused by the Home Economics class (unless you counted the one made by the Drama smoke machine, but that was different).

_What do I do what do I do what do I do?_ I asked myself. Then I made a run for the exit.

Just then my extremely fat and grumpy English teacher, Mrs. Fredgerhart, paced down the hallway quickly, almost like a robot with no emotion. She started spouting nonsense, which actually wasn't very surprising at all, considering the amount of nonsense she usually spouted in English.

"No… Balogh couldn't be it… Clay would be more likely, but… no, still trap her…"

Mom had taught me to beware strangers who'd be likely to kidnap me. Well, she was a stranger, and she was going to kidnap me for some reason or another, so…

I ran.

Unfortunately, I didn't notice _where_ I ran. I quickly shoved myself into a dead end, with only a maintenance closet for hiding.

I opened the door, slammed it shut, and found it full of… math textbooks. Ones for ninth graders, filled with diagrams and equations I could not understand.

_Fine! You'll get Power of a Point, you dunce!_

I heaved a textbook and threw it at Mrs. Fredgerhart. As she watched, I bent down to pick up another one.

However, something made me pause. As I watched, Mrs. Fredgerhart melted away, leaving an 17-year-old girl standing there next to the open Algebra textbook, with a kind of dreamy look.

This was the first weird thing in my day.

Then, she started speaking.

"Oh, Vera, how safe… you would be if this had but happened… just a couple days ago… but no… Kronos is going to kill us all…"

"You. Slow down, please?" I asked, kind of bluntly.

"He would… oh, never mind, nothing… why would you throw a book at me? Did you think I was a…"

"Monster? Maybe." I answered, quickly.

"I… come on. We need to go."

"Wait!" I said. "I need to go find my mom!"

"No you don't… you're coming with me."

"By the way, what's your name?" I asked.

"Name… Lucy."

"Just Lucy, or is that a nickname?"

"Lucille… but no one calls me that… my grandmother, perhaps… you shouldn't…"

"Okay, I'll call you Lucy. Now, where are we heading, again?"

"If I told you… you would not come. I know that… from experience… that perch near the arcade…"

_What perch? Near what arcade?_ I thought. Then I decided against it. It would probably get me into more trouble than I had right now.

"What? Then I'm not coming! Bye-bye!"

I dashed off.

"Wait… come here…" she said. I decided not to wait.

_Lucille Emmaline Hall_

I sprinted after Vera, hot on her heels, trying to catch her before she told her mom everything. But Vera was actually pretty fit, and as she ducked and swerved through a traffic intersection, leaving a long line of honking cars, I had to stop and wait for the light to change. By that time, I had already lost the redheaded girl.

Just then, I got a call from Finklestein & Associates. I figured that was my boss, Mr. Cheng, and that I was about to be scolded for letting Target Two escape.

"LUCILLE! WHAT WERE YOU DOING, LETTING TARGET TWO ESCAPE!"

Yep. Totally right.

"COME ON! DON'T DAWDLE! TRACK HER TO HER HOUSE ALREADY!"

I sighed. Vera Audrey Balogh, also known as Target Two, had not been the murderous girl they had depicted. In reality, she was a bit nicer (although only a bit) and I kind of resented to turn her in to the Kronians, the army of Kronos.

"ONE MORE SCREW-UP AND YOU'RE BOOTED OFF THE TEAM!"

Ugh. Being _booted off_ basically meant being killed. At this rate, I could not have a peaceful life in the Big Apple. Then again, the Kronians did make my life interesting, if only more dangerous.

"GO! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!"

I hung up, and then threw the phone to the ground. Drastic times called for drastic measures.

On second thought, I picked it back up. It would be no use to anybody if the Kronians found the abandoned phone of Patrick Wen, a biology researcher at Cambridge, and suspected that I threw it away.

_Vera Audrey Balogh_

"Vera, what are you doing? You're supposed to be out in the field!"

"Aw, great," I muttered. "Sorry, Mother! I almost got chased down by a stranger and thought I should rush home."

That was _technically_ true. The girl—no, Lucy—had tailed me to that intersection, and she'd technically counted as a stranger, as the identity of Mrs. Fredgerhart didn't really count.

"Sweetie? Are you okay?"

My mother rushed over to give me a big bear hug. I sighed.

_Overprotective parents,_ I thought.

Then, to make it worse, she gave me a bazillion kisses on the cheek.

"You're okay. You're okay. You're okay," she repeated.

_She was probably trying to convince herself,_ I thought. _After all, it's panic season._

"You're okay." My mother took twenty deep breaths and calmed down. "How about you practice for piano?" she asked.

"Sure, why not," I said. After this morning, nothing could get worse from here. Until a certain Lucy decided to pop up in my window.


	3. My House Gets Blown To Bits

**Picking Up The Pieces**

**My House Gets Blown To Bits**

_**A/N: Sorry about the late update. I was busy for a while, and my computer had a kernal panic. I had to resort to my other OS.**_** :( ****_Again, sorry!_**

_August 20_

_John Henry Clay_

Houses, parks, libraries, buildings spread out under me as I gained altitude, flying over the idyllic and quiet neighborhood of Sunset Park as I was searching for the house that mattered. The stately apartment that was buried in a million others, among the high-rises and crowded streets of Brooklyn. But one thing was special: this was the house of the Baloghs.

I had suspected almost immediately that the youngest Balogh was the second of the Chosen Seven. She often sat alone in school, and her eyes – they were different, spheres of red, roiling when she was angered, quietly turning when she was not. Even as one of the Seven, I was already slightly scared when it came to her. She would often have fits.

By the sounds of scuffling, the monsters, Kronos' army, had come for her. I needed to recruit her, to teach her to fight. She could not stand alone.

I swooped down and started fighting.

_Vera Audrey Balogh_

_I guess ol' Brooklyn _is_ being bothered,_ I thought. Monsters were pounding mercilessly at our windows, and only the work of Mr. Bergman, the construction contractor that we always called whenever we needed something fixed, kept them out.

Mother was dozing on the couch. I wanted to wake her, but instead I just threw a blanket over her. _To protect Mother,_ I thought.

_SLAM SLAM SLAM!_ The noise was so loud that I was going deaf from the constant roaring, slamming, and general chaos going outside the neighborhood.

"RRAWWR!" I heard a roar, and the front door fell down.

I grab held of my mother's set of kitchen knives and started raging.

I slashed at the first monster that I could find, and it melted away in a hapless blob in three hits. I never knew a vegetable knife could be so dangerous.

Unfortunately, three others advanced to take its place. And then three more.

I would never win this fight.

_John Henry Clay_

I was outside, cutting through the horde of monsters on the alley. I could hear a scuffle going on inside the apartment, and that was not a good sign.

Fearing the worst, I quickly blasted the window open.

Inside, Vera was backed up against a window. She used her knife, cutting the glass crookedly, and then, after hurling the piece of glass, jumped out the window.

What I was surprised about was not the fact that she was bloodied and stained (and had a cut on one arm), but the fact that she was still alive and fighting. Any normal mortal would have been eaten alive by then.

Another piece to prove my theory.

While Vera was running down the alley, I tried to hold the monsters off as best as I could. Which, turns out, wasn't good enough. My fighting skill hadn't developed that much, since I didn't really pay attention to it while I was training all my other skills.

_Whoops,_ I thought.

Eventually I had to run away, down the same path as her.

I hope she was safe.

_Vera Audrey Balogh_

Well, oof.

Monsters invaded my house.

And there was a 76 right around a block. I huddled in the snack shop, hoping the owners wouldn't mind me stealing a couple bars of Twix. Then I spotted more useful materials: the cans of propane haphazarldly piled up in a corner. _The owners must've been in a hurry,_ I thought. No way. Candy.

_Candy._

I tore the wrappers off the candy and gobbled it up, not caring what it was.

To my surprise, Skittles actually tasted great! I tore through the shelf, determined to find more Skittle packages. Call me childish. I don't care.

However, by then, I could here some banging and scuffling outside.

"Damn it," I spat.

I grabbed a can labeled "G. F. (WARNING: EXPLOSIVE)" from a gas station. Then, breaking the windows, I tossed it at the invading army of monsters down my street. I watched the blue-black can fly through the air.

It.

Went.

Wide.

The shot careened into our window, our apartment, and immediately our apartment began to fill with smoke that was coming out the windows. And as I watched, …

I closed my eyes and cried.

_John Henry Clay_

Where was Vera again? She must've disappeared somewhere into the 76, but where?

_Probably the snack shop,_ I reminded myself.

I checked in the snack shop.

No Vera. Just sounds of crying and sobbing. A rack of sweets were overturned, and there were Skittles wrappers all over the floor. Vera herself was curled up in the corner crying.

I looked out the window. The apartment complex was decimated, its few remaining bits covered in green embers. The can that she threw had not been any ordinary can.

_G. F._ I thought. I smacked my head. _Why couldn't I've realized this earlier! That was what she threw!_

_Slow and steady,_ I reminded myself. Then I began to push the cans into the corner, eventually settling on putting them inside a stall in the closet, and then to push it further, I covered the cans with boxes of Skittles.

Hopefully they wouldn't be sold as "propane." Otherwise they'd be a _very_ nasty surprise.

_John Henry Clay_

Sobbing.

More sobbing.

And even more sobbing.

Vera's eyes were wild, red spheres, and she cried, kicked, and generally caused havoc. When she calmed down, she looked at me with those red eyes.

"Who are you?" she asked, with the kind of weariness one would doubt a stranger.

"I'm John. Nice to meet you." I reached out a hand.

"I'm Vera. Also nice to meet you." Her heavy breathing had slowed down, and she took my hand and shook it.

"I guess we need to go together," I said. And then we walked out of the 76, hand in hand.

_August 21_

_Lucille Emmaline Hall_

A call from Finklestein & Associates popped up on my phone.

I sighed. This had been the thirtieth call today. (Yes, I was exaggerating.)

"LUCILLE! HOW COULD YOU!?"

Resisting the urge to smash the phone on the pavement, I spoke back.

"What happened? Something important?"

"WE LOST TARGET TWO!" Jamming the buttons on my phone, I turned down the sound to its minimum level.

"Oh, right. And you'd blame me for it. I wasn't even there!"

"AND WHY? NOBODY WAS SCHEDULED TO DO THE MIDDAY SHIFT FOR YESTERDAY, AND LOOK WHAT YOU'VE DONE!"

"I would have thought that Units 130 and 291 would do their jobs," I replied. "The midday shift was secure enough. The reappearance of Target One complicated our plans. I had thought that he was still in the orphanage."

"AND YOU COULDN'T HAVE CAPTURED THEM BOTH ON THE SPOT?" Cheng shouted at me over the phone.

"Calm down, Mr. Cheng."

"DON'T TELL ME TO _CALM DOWN_! IF YOU WEREN'T THE BLASTED DAUGHTER OF—"

Static.

"—YOU WOULD HAVE BEEN BOOTED OFF ALREADY!"

I sighed. "Do you have anything important to tell me?" I asked.

"THAT YOU MADE A MASSIVE FAIL TODAY, ON PAR WITH WILLIAMSBURG—"

I could hear faint yelling in the background. Something about not insulting the Titans.

He hung up.

I sighed again, and then took deep breaths, trying to control my anger.

_That Cheng is just a big pile of monster feed,_ I thought. _He's just a puppet, manned by the puppeteers._

_I am not._

_**By the way, I'll try to get the next Picking Up The Pieces chapter out soon, but first comes A's A-dventure. Hope you liked this one!**_

_**As always, comment if you liked it! Or if you did not!**_


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